"I ask you, what is a man to do? What can he do, as commander of the vessel, when his own officers decline, absolutely pointblank decline, to give him ordinary decent respect? Let alone carrying out explicit orders. It's enough to make a man throw up the whole thing in disgust. If I've told my chief officer once I've told him fifty times, I will not have a cuspidor on the bridge for the man at the wheel. My helmsman must have the common decency to refrain from spitting while on duty. What is the result? He laughs in my face. Simply takes not the slightest notice. The same with everything else. Do I give orders to have the captain's tea served at four sharp? What does he do but stops the steward on his way down, drinks the tea, spits in the cup, and tells the man to take it to the captain. And when I ordered him to his room he threatened me. Actually threatened the commander of the ship. I of course logged him for insolent, unbearable, and insubordinate behaviour, and when I read the entry to him according to regulations, he tore the book to pieces and not only threw them at me but offered me bodily violence. I was attacked! And the engineer is, if anything, worse. Stood looking in the port and laughed at the chief officer's ruffianly behaviour. Do you suppose for a single moment I can tolerate this sort of thing?" "Well, well, Captain, I tell you what ..." began Mr. Dainopoulos. "And another thing," continued Captain Rannie, without looking up, "the man's no good in a pinch. Several times on the voyage I've had literally to tell him his work. No sense of his position. Sits on the fore hatch and has long conversations with the crew. I make no charges, mind, none whatever, but I am as certain that man carries my conversation forward as I am of my own existence. When eight bells ring at my orders, he is frequently nowhere to be seen, and if I send the man at the wheel to find him and bring him up, as I have had to do more than once, he keeps the man with him in his room playing cards, leaving me at the wheel. That's gratitude. That's the sort of thing I have to put up with from this man. Do you suppose for a moment that I can allow it to go on for ever?" "Well, Captain," said Mr. Dainopoulos again, "I can see we shall have to ..."